Realizations

(Also: Some perhaps unreasonable complaints concerning the Cintiq my parents got me last December)


I've come to realize the true secrets to becoming an artist. While I've never gained the internet fame (or real-world fame, even in my school) to have dozens of people ask me, "OMG, leik, how does u draw so good?" I have in fact figured out how to get there. 


I first discovered what may be considered by some to be artistic talent in about 4th grade, when we were assigned to draw trees, and the trees I drew looked 6% more like trees than the trees my classmates drew, and they told me that my trees were amazing and that I must be so talented. I let those few comments get to my head and I started drawing everywhere. I'd doodle on my notes, on assignments; I would've drawn on the walls if my parents hadn't been so strict. My fifth grade teacher hated me because of it, but I didn't think too highly of her, either, and that childish spite spurred me on to keep drawing and drawing in drawing. In sixth grade, my homeroom teacher and my art teacher complimented my drawings, and that burst of confidence lasted through seventh grade. 


I thought to myself, somewhat subconsciously, that I was chosen in some way, that I was special, as long as I wasn't looking at someone else's artwork. At first, only the artwork that was better than mine bothered me. Something pricked at the back of my mind, asking, if I was so special, why wasn't I as good as Sally or Joey or Kevin or Rachel? So I quietly pushed those doubts away and kept drawing and drawing, telling myself I'd be as good as them soon enough. 


And then I reached high school, and that confidence, completely unfounded, now that I think about it, started to dissipate. I started to notice weird quirks in anatomy, weird facial features, in middle pointed out and poked fun at by peers. Now that I was in high school, I started to notice them myself and worked and worked to try to fix them. Now, it's not only the amazing artwork that smashes my ego into tiny little fragments. It didn't take me that long to consider professional-level artists waay out of my league, to tell myself I didn't have to worry about them for another ten years. Now, it's the artwork that's as good as mine, slightly better, or slightly worse. With the art that's at my level, I ask myself why I'm still at the level I am. With artwork that's slightly better, I ask myself why I'm not there yet. With artwork that's slightly worse than mine, I ask myself why I still have the flaws present in that artwork. The worst part is, the remnants of my ego from elementary school keep me from distinguishing what's what. 


And so comes the realization that I'm not improving as rapidly or as much as I'd like. So come the realizations that I'm not special or chosen or unique, that I'm not impressive, and neither is my artwork. Drawing can be learned after all, and there are many who can recreate a scene exactly with the slightest effort. It's come to the point that I see my art as getting worse and worse instead of better and better. At times, I wish and hope and yearn (I'd pray if I believed in any of it) to hate my art, just so I could give up and quit and never have to look at a 4B pencil with any more thought than, "Huh, I didn't know there was anything other than HB" ever again. 


So, if anyone would like the know, the secret to being an artist is to practice, of course, and be cocky. Draw whenever you can, at any possible moment, even if your teachers hate you for it or your friends make fun of you for it. You're an artist, so create art. But let yourself get a little bit cocky. Tell yourself, Hey, I'm pretty good at this. There's no other way you'll be able to get over the constant self-criticism or the jeers from your friends. 


And, look, I'm not saying that's gonna get you to be a good artist. You're going to have to study some things and keep working and bashing yourself and trying to improve. But the ego's going to help you get to the point where you're willing to do that. What I'm trying to figure out is how to keep that ego from getting so big that it keeps you from getting anywhere once you've really started to improve.
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Lately, I think I've come dangerously close to quitting drawing quite a few times in that past, say, five weeks. I don't know if maybe I'm just going through a phase, or maybe drawing was just a phase (that lasted almost 8 years) but I don't really enjoy it. Then again, I've come to not enjoy sleeping, either, so maybe there's just something wrong with me.


The good news is, I'm starting to invest in traditional artwork, where I use an actual pencil or a real paintbrush with real synthetic hair (see what I did there?), a bit more. Actually, this morning I was at an art class (because I've started taking real art classes, in which I give someone some money, and in turn someone tells me, Move your pencil like this, keep in mind the light source, and voila, a masterpiece) and I swear to god I heard someone from the kids' painting class in the next room say, "When I was a little kid..." The kid couldn't have been older than 7. Are seven-year-olds allowed to say that, or am I just a senile old f**k who needs to be institutionalized? 


Anyway, I think I started to come dangerously close to quitting soon after my parents got me a new tablet last month. That isn't to say I didn't appreciate it-- tablets are lovely inventions, and I was a stupid prick for not appreciating them in middle school. No, not that at all. It's just the type of tablet they got . 'Cuz it was a Wacom Cintiq. 


That, for all you traditionalists out there who don't know what a tablet is, is a device used for drawing that features a large pad on which you can use an electronic pen and make lines and scribbles and marks appear on the computer screen as if by magic. With most tablets, that pad is blank and you're forced to look up at the computer screen, meaning you're not actually looking at where your hand is, so it takes a few months of practice before the lines start to move any distance away from awkward. With a Cintiq, however (the smaller of the two models, incidentally, costing, oh, about $1,000 [that's a comma, folks]) the pad is actually an LCD screen on which you can see the computer screen, so you don't have to look two feet from where your hand actually is to draw. 


It's a beautiful manifestation of human ingenuity, but it's making me miserable. First off, it has miles and miles of wires, and a bajillion little plugs and it's a pain to start up. Secondly, plugging in the video adapter causes the colors on my computer screen to turn unnaturally bright, and the colors on the tablet differ from the ones normally on my computer, so the colors on my drawing turn out more than a little warped. Lastly, I am a 16-year-old girl who draws cartoons as a hobby. What the f**king hell am I doing with a Cintiq?


A Cintiq is a tablet primarily used by professionals-- because, really, only advanced and well-off professionals are able to afford it. It's the kind of tablet that should only be touched by a professional who's able to sell his/her artwork for thousands of dollars with the confidence that some company or advertiser or other will willingly pay those thousands of dollars to use that artwork. I have a hard time getting people to pay a couple of bucks for my artwork. (*ahem* Artwork that takes me four or more hours to make. Meaning for any four hour drawing sold at $2, I'm basically paid 50 cents an hour.) I'm nowhere near skilled enough to use a Cintiq properly, and I really shouldn't be within a 20-meter radius of it, anyway.


And it's been a while since we bought it, and it's been used, and I doubt anyone I could possibly contact would be willing/able to drop a few hundred (or a thousand) dollars to take it off my hands. I actually stated explicitly that all I wanted was an intuos4, a very nice tablet by the same company. Sure, it doesn't have a screen on it, but it doesn't have 6 miles of wires, doesn't take half an hour to set up, and I won't need to get a separate truck to drive it to another state when I leave for college. 


So, I don't really mean to complain about my tablet, though that's really what I'm doing. My dad, the, er, genius who decided to buy me that monster of a doohickey, gave the excuse of, Oh, it's for my precious and only daughter. If you really thought so highly of me, you'd take the time to listen to a few of the words that come out of my mouth and maybe take them into consideration when you want to buy me a $1,000 gadget that I neither need nor want. 


And as a warning to any aspiring digital artists who may have come across this blog post because I used the words "cintiq" and "wacom" and "tablet" so many times, if you're a beginner, get a bamboo. Once you get better, stick with your bamboo. Once that thing gets old and decrepit and you're serious about your art and you've lost the arrogance that got you so into drawing and you think you may have improved a smidgen since you started over 5 years ago, go ahead and get a better tablet. But stay away from the Cintiq until you're absolutely sure you need it. There are professional artists who are making money without Cintiqs, and who've even forgone the chance to get one because they don't need one. So don't bother. You don't need one. Why would you need one? Honestly?